Article Submission Guidelines
Thank you for submitting your article(s).
Following are a few article submission guidelines to help answer your technical questions and to suggest some formatting and file naming conventions to help achieve a more consistent look to the site and consequently more enjoyable user experience.
TinyMCE Editor
The default WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor installed with Joomla is the TinyMCE editor. This is an open-source, platform independent, web-based, Javascript editor that should be easy to use, with text editing toolbar buttons that are very similar to those found in Microsoft Word and OpenOffice Writer.
Submitting Articles
A Joomla website comprises the "front-end" viewable web-pages and the "back-end" for site administration. Joomla websites provide for several different types of users to distinguish what a person visiting the site may do. Here is a short overview of the front-end user types:
- guest, casual visitor who can only view the public front-end of the site
- registered user, may also view any registered user content of the site
- author, may submit articles but cannot edit or publish them once submitted
- editor, may submit and edit articles but cannot publish them
- publisher, may submit, edit and publish articles to the site
When submitting an article to the site, it is most important to remember to include a Section and Category appropriate to your article. A number of Sections and Categories have been setup and this will determine where your article will appear on the site. If it is left in the Uncategorised Section and Category it will not be published and actually disapear from the front-end view. You will no longer be able to find and edit your article from the front-end, even if you are an editor or publisher. If this happens, alert the webmaster or another user with back-end access to retrieve and publish your article.
Formatting Guidelines
A few suggested guidelines for formatting articles for this website to help achieve a more consistent look:
- Use bold and italics sparingly
- Use the Paragraph format (usually the default)
- Use left justification (usually the default)
- Use a single space after a full-stop, question or exclamation mark
. The double space is a relic of the days of the typewriter. A computer automatically adjusts spacing and it is now considered correct to use just a single space. Insert / Edit Links
To insert a link to another external or internal page, you may use the Insert/edit link toolbar button, which looks like a chain. First highlight some text of your article, then click the Insert/edit link toolbar button. Type or paste the link into the Link URL field, select the Target (whether to open the link the current window, a new blank window etc.) and optionally enter a Title text, the popup caption displayed when a user hovers a mouse over the link. Finally click Insert. Make sure to test your link!
Using the Safari web-browser causes errors, and the process needs to be repeated. It will then work.
Uploading Files
The TinyMCE editor does not support the uploading of files. For this purpose the linkr plugin was installed. Linkr can be found towards the bottom of the TinyMCE editor screen. Clicking on linkr will open a popup window. Clicking on Files will open the screen as shown below.
File Locations and Naming Convention
On the internet it is best to avoid filenames containing spaces as these make it difficult for internet web-browser links. We have adopted the following file naming convention for sermons and bulletins:
- sermon_date.pdf e.g. sermon_20090215.pdf
- bulletin_date.pdf e.g. bulletin_20090215.pdf
By Joomla default all uploads go to the public "images/stories" folder. Here you will find a"pdf" folder with sub-folders for sermons and bulletins. Please upload sermons and bulletins here:
- /images/stories/pdf/sermons/2009
- /images/stories/pdf/bulletins/2009
Files which are not sermons or bulletins can be uploaded as you see fit inside the "images" folder and its sub-folders.